Hands down one of the most challenging, yet enjoyable assignments I’ve received at Blue Sky was this map of Whoville to help promote Horton Hears A Who. After pretty much all the art duties were done on Horton and most of us were moving on to Ice Age 3 I got to stay behind and live in Dr. Seuss’ world for a little bit longer. This was a huge drawing. In order to get all the detail into it that I wanted I ended up drawing it at 40 inches by 30 inches (or something like that I don’t remember exactly.) The assignment was to create a map in the same vein as the Where’s Waldo illustrations. It would show the inherent humor of living in Whoville as well as a general guide to the different locations that we find in the movie. Below is somewhat of a step by step process of how the map got made.
I began by coming up with some gags that we might see in the map:
Next I worked up several thumbnail drawings:
Then settled on the best one:
I refined the drawing and got the underlining architecture a little more defined:
Next I blew that drawing up and used it as a guide to draw the buildings:
And then I laid vellum drafting paper over the top and sketched out each of the whos:
Here they are together:
With the drawing all figured out now I moved on to the inking. Because it was going to be such a pain to scan this in I decided to ink the whole thing in Flash. It almost crippled the program to do something this heavy, but it all turned out fine. And the crisp clean line work I got out of it was just what I was looking for.
Buildings first:
Then the Whos:
Finally it was time to color it. With the time constraints I was under the studio hired a freelance artist to lay in color for the back ground while I did the coloring of the Whos. Once I got the color back from him I put the two together and adjusted the colors to better match what we were doing with the movie and what I was doing with the Whos. Here’s a couple close ups. These are reduced 50% of the original size, just to let you know how big the original file is:
January 27th, 2009 at 11:31 am
Holy crap. That’s a whole lotta work, but it turned out great. Good job.
January 27th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
The perspective is what wouldve murdered me in my sleep. Great job Jake, it looks a lot like the whoville from the movie.
January 27th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
This is so fun to look at! Maybe I should wallpaper my family room in Jake Art.
January 27th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
wow…
wow.
January 27th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
Great work man. How long did it take to complete this beast, and didn’t you have to scan it in in order to ink it digitally?
January 27th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
Wow, that’s great! I love all the little jokes going on. I agree with Todd, the perspective looks like it would have driven me crazy!
January 27th, 2009 at 7:41 pm
How are you able to post this in your blog if this is a contract? Are you able to retain the rights?
It’s very well done.
January 27th, 2009 at 9:13 pm
I’ll add another WOW to the chorus of wows. This is the kind of thing that kids will stare at for hours. Quite the assignment…I love seeing your process. Thanks for sharing!
January 27th, 2009 at 9:49 pm
Just curious, as a promotion, was this actually made available to the public? My sister and I used to spend countless hours “living in” Dr. Suess’ Whoville, awing at the funny buildings, the labyrinths, etc. and I’d love to track this down if it ever made its way into a children’s book or what not.
Whatever the case, it’s awesome, and we appreciate you sharing it!
January 27th, 2009 at 9:56 pm
Brandon – I scanned the pencils and lining them all up and making the pieces work together was such a chore I decided it’d be better to just ink it digitally. Besides flash is vector based so if they ever wanted to print it 10 feet wide the line quality would hold up.
Joel – This image is owned by 20th Century Fox, but as the illustrator I am able to show it for portfolio purposes.
Texcap – I don’t think it ever saw print in the states. I got a copy of it made for the Mexican market. Not sure where else it was printed.
January 27th, 2009 at 10:29 pm
…. You are crazy! How long did that take?!? You may be crazy, but you are also the man.
January 28th, 2009 at 3:16 am
Might you be able to post a higher res image? I would love to spend some hours in there!
January 28th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
holy skamokawae that is fantastic. I especially love the cutaways (a JP trademark?).
Is it hanging in your house now?
Reminds me of those underground bases we all drew as boys. Only much, much, much, much better.
January 28th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
Holy Moly Jake! That is both awesome and a LOT of detail. Just the thought of drawing it makes my eyes all bleary.
January 29th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
Very nice, Jake! I like to ink in Flash as well. Really great work here.
February 1st, 2009 at 6:42 pm
Jake, great job but you’re just a little insane. My son put it up as the desktop for our second monitor and when ever we are waiting for something to load we kind of get lost in the image. My kids want to know how many Whos are in there. Did you count them?
February 2nd, 2009 at 6:11 pm
I’m blown away by the detail Jake. I love the guy falling off the arcitectural cutaway. Great gag. I’m curious why you chose to use Flash for your vector work as opposed to illustrator?
February 2nd, 2009 at 7:13 pm
Rigger – I don’t have illustrator. And the brush tool in flash seems to do everything I’d want it to do. And that guy falling off, I had to check the image again because I forgot about that gag. Thanks!
Humber – I counted them once, I can’t remember, but I think it was close to 250.
February 3rd, 2009 at 1:01 am
Insane.
February 3rd, 2009 at 2:57 am
FANTÁSTICAS ILUSTRACIONES!!
February 3rd, 2009 at 10:43 am
Absolutely awesome.
February 3rd, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Well Flash seems to do the job. I never thought of using it that way.
February 3rd, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Oh boy, I don’t know what to say about this other than… JAW-DROPPING!!
February 7th, 2009 at 7:27 pm
Holy Crap!!! That’s awesome! And an awful lot of work! Beautiful.
February 11th, 2009 at 7:07 am
[...] yay! }. I find the drawing tools in Flash are much more intuitive. One of my favorite artists, Jake Parker, has a nice blog entry demonstrating how he inks with [...]
March 16th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
Great job, congratulations!
I was once comissioned to do something like that for an advertising agency, but the job was cancelled in the comp fase. What a relief…
Greetings from Brazil.
April 29th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
[...] A Map of Whoville [...]
May 5th, 2009 at 10:18 am
[...] A Map of Whoville [...]
May 5th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
[...] Карта на Хувил [...]
June 28th, 2009 at 12:51 am
WOW That looks awesomely awesome. Looks like it took you a while. But it’s very colourful and awesome!
July 7th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
I am very interested in having a custom image like the one you show created for an event I’m doing. It would feature the many things a child loves to do (the child have MANY interests) – themed Where’s Brandon. Interested?
October 14th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
Unbelievable artwork! I’m an artist and art teacher, and have been searching everywhere for some good images of Whoville to show my students, which will then create their own imaginary world. Thank You for sharing your artwork- it will definitely make an impact on my students:)
October 16th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
so how do we get your art?
July 18th, 2010 at 9:11 am
i like it! i like this style of draw.
August 16th, 2010 at 3:50 pm
Wow this is amazing, I was just browsing for references online when I stumbled upon this. I love the architecture and color scheme, it’s great!!! And all the Who’s are cute and hilarious. As an Graphic Designs and Animation student I can really appreciate the time and effort put into this piece. I also love how you incorporated the characters from the movie into to this. I spent probably an hour just pointing out the who’s that I recognized. Once again I LOVE!!!! this piece, Good job!!